This invention relates to the field of computer systems. More particularly, a system and methods are provided for facilitating recovery from a failed attempt to create a document.
Forms and templates are often used to generate documents. For example, a company's personnel department may offer a variety of electronic forms for employees to use for various purposes (e.g., updating benefits information, tax withholding). Different employees can use the forms or templates to create documents tailored to their needs.
However, many different errors may occur when a form or template is used to generate a document. For example, data needed to complete a form may not be available or may be of an invalid type or format, the logic for merging the form and input data may be flawed, etc. If an error is serious enough, the document may not even be generated.
When creation of a document fails, or the created document contains an error, it is often very difficult to correct the error or errors. Typically, the document is being created for an end user, and is transmitted or served to that user. However, the user may not be savvy regarding the document creation process and may not understand why the error occurred. Therefore, the user may contact a help desk or a technical support office to have the problem fixed.
However, the help desk or technical support personnel may not be able to trace or reproduce the error even if they attempt to create the same document using the same form, because they may be doing so with different parameters (e.g., different access rights, different default directories, different software version). For example, they may not be able to access data used to create the document, either for security reasons or because the data changes in real time. The personnel may therefore have to access log files created during the document creation process, review configuration files used by in the creation process, examine the input data, and so on.
Fixing a document creation failure or error can therefore be a time-consuming evolution, and may not even be possible if the failure or error cannot be traced.